rg3/youtube-dl — Issue #240: Request - Please consider using m4a suffix for downloaded "--extract-audio" aac files.
Author: bat999
Created: 2011-12-02 18:43:08+00:00
State: open

Hi
I've been using the "--extract-audio" feature.
It seems to do a good job. It extracts the audio without transcoding. That's fine.

When I run command:-
youtube-dl -F http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdopMqrftXs
It tells me:-

Available formats:
34	:	flv	[360x640]
18	:	mp4	[360x640]
43	:	webm	[360x640]
5	:	flv	[240x400]

When I use command:-
youtube-dl -t -f 5 --extract-audio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdopMqrftXs
It downloads file:- The_Beatles_-_Let_It_Be-RdopMqrftXs.mp3

When I use command:-
youtube-dl -t -f 43 --extract-audio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdopMqrftXs
It downloads file:- The_Beatles_-_Let_It_Be-RdopMqrftXs.ogg

These are both OK.

But when I use command:-
youtube-dl -t -f 18 --extract-audio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdopMqrftXs
It downloads file:- The_Beatles_-_Let_It_Be-RdopMqrftXs.aac

Would it not be better if the downloaded aac file was muxed in mp4 container - so that the file suffix is m4a, not aac?
I think that FFmpeg can do this job.

If you agree that m4a is more suitable than aac, it might need to be applied to the "audio-format FORMAT" option also.
--audio-format FORMAT "best", "aac", "vorbis" or "mp3"; best by default

Thanks.